


burden

by helenblackthorn



Series: ghosts [2]
Category: Mortal Instruments Series - Cassandra Clare
Genre: Family, Friendship, Hurt/Comfort, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-24
Updated: 2015-07-24
Packaged: 2018-04-11 00:41:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,912
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4414295
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/helenblackthorn/pseuds/helenblackthorn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mark and Helen catch up on five years of lost time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	burden

It’s been a month since his return home, but still, Mark had trouble adjusting to life among Shadowhunters. A life he had lived, previously, which was just as odd to think about as it was odd to know he was back home.

He felt his presence with the Nephilim to be awkward and forced. Mark had been with the Wild Hunt for many years, but time in Faerie had moved much slower than time in the mundane world - all of his siblings had changed so much he hardly recognized them, much less knew who they were. He knew their names and their faces (once chubby and childlike, now three of them had adapted more adult-like features as they grew into their teenage years) but he knew nothing about them anymore. It was like returning to strangers, which was perhaps the scariest thing yet, because it was his _family_. A family he spent years longing for.

So Mark often found himself wandering the Institute at night while everyone slept, trying to reclaim pieces of who he once was before the Wild Hunt took him as their own. Before the mischievous fae-child, buried always deep within him by nature, grabbed reigns and took control of his life. Mark wondered if Helen felt that same mischievousness in her as well.

He had trouble sleeping, plagued often by nightmares, so it had morphed into some hapless habit of his.

Most of the time Mark found himself at the library the longest, fingers running along the spines of dusty books, eyes skimming their titles. He was drawn to the classics - Shakespeare, Mark Twain - because despite everything he remembers he liked reading those the most. A little taste of mundane history bound in thin yellow pages.

But tonight was a little different. Emotions were running high within his family, and it was only 11 pm, so Julian, Emma and the Rosales were still awake, hanging around in the sitting room downstairs like they had been hours ago. Mark had been avoiding them, because he was in no mood to deal with Jaime Rosales - not when he was sober, certainly not when he was drinking wine - so he had opted to spend a majority of his night in the training room instead.

The training room was almost unfamiliar territory in the institute. Mark had spent a significantly less amount of time here than anywhere else, simply because he felt like he did not belong there. Nephilim weapons felt strange in his hands, just as a stele did. He had runes still, the permanent ones, but he had avoided putting on new ones like he avoided going on hunts. The only thing Mark had hunted in years was food, and he felt grossly ill-prepared for anything else.

Mark was just observing his old crossbow, one he remembered his step-mom and father had given him when he turned 10, when the training room doors creaked open. Mark paused mid-reach, turned to look over his shoulder. It was dark, mind the light from the moon through the glass windows, but he could just make out Helen’s figure as she closed the door softly behind her.

It was strange. Helen was 23 now, but she almost looked just as he remembered. Her hair was longer now, blonde ringlets falling to her waist, and her features were a little more defined. But she was still beautiful, still tall but inches shorter than him, still the Helen he remembered when he was 16…Just five years older.

He cleared his throat then, because she didn’t seem to notice him there in the shadows of the room, and his  older sister yelped in surprise. “Jesus, Mark!” Helen cried, one hand over her heart as she steadied her breathing. “I had no idea you’d be in here. Sorry if I um, disturbed you?”

“It’s alright, I’m sorry that I scared you,” Mark responded, offering her a tiny smile. It was - after all, it was the first time since she had gotten home that afternoon that they weren’t surrounded by their younger siblings. “I could use some company.”

Helen smiled at him before turning her gaze on the long swords mounted on the wall. “There was a training room on Wrangel Island,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest. He could see the marriage tune over her heart, some of it disappearing beneath her tank top. Mark wondered if he would have one some day - but after a moment’s consideration, he was doubtful. “Aline and I trained every day like we did back home, but we were surrounded by wards -”

“I’m sorry.” He interrupted. He didn’t mean to cut her off, but something in him just burst, a flutter of guilt in his chest that overtook him. Helen looked over at him, sharp brows furrowed, but otherwise didn’t say anything. Mark took a few hesitant steps forward, frowning. “I’m sorry you had to go through all that alone. Everything that’s happened during the war. Everything after, the war.”

Helen drew in a breath, bit her lower lip, but Mark continued before she could say anything. “I had no idea that you were gone. I relied on the fact that you were here taking care of the kids while I was in the Hunt. Simon Lewis didn’t tell me you had been banished when we met again.” He sighed, ran his fingers through his hair. “When I returned home and you weren’t here…I thought the worst. I’m sorry, Helen.”

“Don’t,” Helen shook her head, voice firm. Her eyes were watery, and Mark feared she would cry again. “You have absolutely  _nothing_  to apologize for, Mark. What happened - they took you away. There was nothing that you could have done.”

“I should have been there to help you take care of the kids. No one should have to handle the weight of that stress on their own. Especially not during a war.”

“Just like I should have been at the Institute when it was attacked.” Helen said, and Mark could have sworn he heard her voice waver. “Instead of Alicante with the Penhallows. I’m not going to play the blame game with you Mark. We’re both home now, the best we could do is just…try to get things back to normal as much as we can. I’ve had enough time on Wrangel Island to come to terms with everything that’s happened.”

Mark said nothing. He knew his sister was right, and he wanted to quell the guilt he knew that she still felt. He wanted to tell her that it would have been useless - that she would have been taken to the valley of Salt or sacrificed to Lilith or Asmodeus, but her stern look was enough to keep his words unspoken. Helen’s eyes are dark, but she gives him a watery smile and wipes a single tear from her cheek. “Come here big sis,” He said softly instead, pulling her into a familiar embrace. Helen wrapped her arms around his waist, and he held her tight. “We’re all so screwed up, aren’t we?”

Helen laughed, fingers curling around his shirt. “If you know a more screwed up family I’d like to either meet them or stay very far away from them.” She pulled back and sighed, “we have a lot to catch up on, Mark. You have no idea how much I missed you. I at least got to talk to the others, whether it was illegally or not is another story. And you know…I was worried about you.”

“You worry about everything,” Mark teased, smirking at the stink-eye she was giving him. “I’m not doing anything important tonight.” He paused before continuing - it felt awkward to ask because it had been so long, but it was Helen, and despite the time they had spent apart she would always, first and foremost, be one of his best friends. It was already easier talking to her than it was talking to anybody else, much more familiar; Mark hadn’t realized how much he had missed it until now. “So, we could just…hang out if you want? Catch up on everything that we’ve missed after all these years. Like we used to when we were younger.”

She grinned, slow, the ghost of the memories of all-nighters they pulled together talking about both everything and nothing at the same time, clear in her eyes. “Just like old times, baby brother.” Helen said, nostalgia in her voice.

The two of them spend the next few hours cross-legged on the floor by the glass walls overlooking the calming waves of the Palisades. Helen explained to him, with a great reluctance but only so because he had asked, everything that happened after the Los Angeles Institute had been attacked. She described the horrors of the war: how she and Aline had fought the Endarkened at the Citadel, then the war with Sebastian’s army of dark Shadowhunters and the Faeries. How it was to fight through the faerie wards that made her ill. Helen told him, briefly, of the loneliness of her and Aline’s exile.

In turn, Mark revealed very few details of his time spent with the Wild Hunt. Many of the memories were still fresh to this day - he saw them in his dreams, and very little of them were peaceful. He left out details he knew she wouldn’t want to hear, details he wish he didn’t have to experience. Watched her smile when he spoke of his relationship with a faerie named Kieran and another, Laila; that once the three of them had loved each other. Cried with her when their father and Katerina came up.

Neither of them spoke of the guilt that had crippled them. Mark could see it in Helen’s eyes just as she could undoubtedly see it in his, but whether it was a topic for another day or never at all was beyond him.

“- and somehow she convinced me to go ice swimming with her in -30 degree weather in our underwear. Mind you we’d already gone through our second bottle of wine respectively,” Helen explained, shaking her head with a smile, “it was probably the stupidest thing I’ve ever done, save a few risky demon hunts a couple of years ago. Aline nearly got frostbite on her toes. Never again.”

Mark, laying on his side and supported by his forearm, threw his head back and laughed. “How did you handle such cold weather?” He asked after a moment, and there was a tiredness in his voice that made it sluggish. Helen had long ago explained that the reason she was still awake was because of switching time-zones so unexpectedly.

She shrugged, laying on her back across from him and staring up at the high ceiling, hands folded on her stomach. Facing her, Mark could see the sun beginning to rise just beyond the ocean. “You get used to it after a while, with the proper clothing and runes. I’m going to have to adapt to the California heat all over again.” He hummed in response, turning on his back as well and closing his eyes. The ceiling was much less interesting to look at than the ocean, but his elbow was tense and ached from laying there for so long.

Julian and Emma find them there not five hours later, the two of them sprawled out on the floor and fast asleep - and really, it was  _almost_  like nothing had changed at all. 


End file.
